This verb in the active voice means ‘honour, praise, reverence’ and has a positive, usually religious, sense. The middle voice appears in usage a true reflexive ‘honour oneself, pride oneself’, and thus may be used also in a negative sense. The overtone must be taken from the context, e.g. the following translations are found in SOL: ‘boast’ (alpha 389, phi 94)), 'brag' (tau 893), ‘took pride’ (beta 93), ‘be arrogant’ (beta 532), ‘be reserved’ (theta 521), cf. LSJ ‘affect a grave and solemn air.’
[1] Cf. the scholia to Aristophanes, Frogs 1020, where the headword occurs.
[2] Diogenes Laertius 4.22. The writer is comparing two distinguished philosophers, Polemo (pi 1887) and Crates (kappa 2342), to an otherwise unknown aulos-player (delta 1184), who played only for select audiences. The point is that the two philosophers were no friends of the people φιλοδημώδεε , and presumably did not bother with their inferiors. He appears to make no judgment on this sort of pride.